23 April 2013 – Josephine Falls and The Boulders (Cairns)

As per usual, we didn’t rush to get out of bed this morning.  But when we finally did we headed to McDonalds to breakfast and then south again, this time to Josephine Falls.  We had been told a bit about this waterfall and were looking forward to seeing it.  It’s a multi-tiered waterfall where you can swim in the bottom section.  The water was lovely and clear and once again, many people were here enjoying it.  To the left of the bottom piece of rock which drops into the pool, the rock is smooth and has an easy gradient.  This is used as a slide into the bottom rockpool and there were plenty of people enjoying it so in we went too.  The climb to the top of the rock was good to start but with so many people using (and wetting) it and with the sun moving away a little, our little climber rock was getting more slippery.  We had a ball though.  Josh swam back to our gear to take a few pics of the kids sliding down the rocks and doing so, stacked it big.  He had a lovely big bruise in a few spots on his knee.  One of the tourists here was making me feel a little ill.  He was climbing a tree that was leaning towards the bottom rockpool – up about 5 metres or more.  If he had have slipped, or if the branch had have broken, he would have landed amongst the big boulders.  Fortunately the both times he did this, his jump was precision perfect and he landed in the deep section away from the rocks.  It was attention seeking, crazy and stupid but he succeeded.  After enjoying this spot for at least an hour, we drove further on to another place called The Boulders.  We ate a bit of lunch and then headed down for a swim in the running creek.  There was only one other family here being a mother with her three children (the father was coming to meet them the following week).  We got talking to the family and the kids had a great time playing together.  Actually, the girls were having fun to start with but then became frustrated with the 12yo boy (Liam) when they weren’t strong enough to tip Liam off their blow up boat to get a go on it themselves.  On our return towards Cairns we stopped in at the butcher at Babinda to stock up a little.  Back at the van, we visited Jacynda to drop off a small gift for her 10^th birthday (I would say it is hard to celebrate birthdays on the road with nobody around).  Later that evening we all enjoyed some yummy birthday cake along with the usual sing-along.